Publications describing conventional methods and systems for accessing databases via the telephone and publications on subjects related to these technologies, such as speech recognition publications, include the following:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,608,460 to Carter, entitled "Comprehensive Automatic Directory Assistance Apparatus and Method Thereof; PA1 WO Patent 88/02965 to Daudelin, entitled "Directory Assistance Call Processing and non-Supervisory Signal Monitoring Arrangements"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,650,927 to James, entitled "Processor Assisted Communication System using Tone-Generating Telephones"; PA1 U.S. Pat. 5,255,310, to Kim, entitled "Method of Approximately Matching an Input Character String with a Key Word and Vocally Outputting Data"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,112 to Kondraske, entitled "Character pattern Recognition and Communications Apparatus"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,689 to O'Sullivan, entitled "Interactive Transit: Information System"; PA1 WO Patent 89/00793 to Padden, entitled "Directory Assistance Systems"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,206 to Padden, entitled "Directory Assistance Systems"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,131,045 to Roth, entitled "Audio-Augmented Data Keying"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,038 to Shepard, entitled "Apparatus and Method for Obtaining information in a Wide-Area Telephone System with Digital Data Transmission Between a Local Exchange and an Information Storage Site"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,928,724 to Byram, entitled "Voice-Actuated Telephone Directory--Assistance System"; PA1 Church K. W., Phonological Parsing in Speech Recognition, Kluwer Academic Publ, 1987; PA1 Colangelo R. D., "Directory Assistance for the Visually Impaired", SouthEastcon 89, Vol 3, pp. 1168-1171, 1989; PA1 Fast L., Ballantine R., "Dialing a Name: Alphabetic Entry Through a Telephone Keypad", SIGCHI, Vol 20(2) pp. 34, 1988; PA1 Glowacz D., "RBOCs Vocalize Operator Services", Telephone Engineer & Management, Vol 95(7) pp. 25-30, 1991; PA1 Holmgren J. E., "Toward bell System Applications of Automatic Speech Recognition", The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol 62(6) pp. 1865-1881, 1983; PA1 Jack M. A.,. "Design and Evaluation of Automated Telephone Services", IEE Colloquium on Telecommunications, pp. 61-64, 1992; PA1 Klatt D. H., "Review of Text-to-Speech Conversion for English", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 82(3) pp. 737-793, 1987; PA1 Lennig M., "Putting Speech Recognition to Work in the Telephone Network", Computer, Vol 23(8) pp. 35-41, 1990; PA1 Myers C. S., Rabiner L.R., "An Automated Directory Listing Retrieval System based on Recognition of Connected Letter Strings", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 71(3), pp. 716-727,. 1982; PA1 Ohyama Minoru, "A Knowledge-Based Directory Assistance System", Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol 5(1) pp. 109-117, 1989; PA1 Pelto G. E., "Designing the Telephone Interface for Voice Processing Applications", Speech Technology, Vol 5(1) pp. 18-21, 1989; PA1 Schalk T. B., "Automating Operator-Assisted Calls Using Speech Recognition", Eurospeech 89, Vol 1 pp. 441-444, 1989; PA1 Veith R. H., "Information Retrieval via Telephone Keypad and Voice: Experiences with Telephone Directories", National Online Meeting Proceedings, Vol 1 pp. 443-451, 1990; PA1 Veith R. H., "Operator Assisted Services with Automated Responses",Audiotex, Vol 1 pp. 19-28, 1986; PA1 Rabiner L., Juang B., Fundamentals of Speech Recognition, Prentice-Hall, 1993, pp. 43-52; PA1 Hall, P. A. "Approximate string matching", Computing surveys, Vol. 12(4), pp. 381-402, 1980; PA1 Salomaa, A., "Computation and Automatation", Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 44-55; PA1 Tremblay, J. P.; Sorenson, P. G., "An introduction to data structures with applications", McGraw-Hill, 1976, pp. 316-318; PA1 Vitale, T. "An algorithm for high accuracy name pronunciation by parametric speech synthesizer", Computational Linguistics, Vol. 17(3), pp. 257-276, 1991; PA1 Lorenz, A., Stochastic Automata Constructive Theory, John Wiley and Sons, 1974; and PA1 Aldefeld, B. "Automated directory listing retrieval system based on isolated word recognition",Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 68(11), pp. 1364-1379, 1980. PA1 The disclosures of all above references and publications cited therein are hereby incorporated by reference.